Zaghari Ratcliffe: A Demise through Diplomatic Obscurity?

For the past five years, Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s existence has been shrouded in a complex web of discordant international diplomacy, remnants of Iranian revolutionary politics and the mental and physical torture of separation from her family. On the day that she was meant to be released from her arbitrary imprisonment in Iran, which has included prolonged solitary confinement and most recently tagged house arrest, further charges were brought against her. She now awaits the verdict of her second court trial, which occurred on the 14th of March 2021, a week after she was meant to be released back to the UK.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe is a British-Iranian who holds dual citizenship, a status which remains unrecognised by the Iranian government. She worked in the UK as a project manager for the Thompson-Reuters Foundation, alongside the international development charity, BBC Media Action. In March 2016 Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested by the Revolutionary Guard in Iran’s international airport whilst on a return visit from her family with her young daughter, Gabriella. Her documents were confiscated and the formal charges which eventually emerged accused her of plotting against the Iranian government as a spy for the British. Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe was placed in solitary confinement for nearly nine months and denied access to legal representation and communication with British embassy officials and her family. In September 2016, she was sentenced to five years in prison on grounds of security charges. Subsequently, Zaghari-Ratcliffe has endured the physical and mental strain of maintaining her innocence, which has left her needing immediate medical attention, according to human rights charity Redress, after “extremely stressful, traumatising experiences in the prisons of Iran”. Now, in a renewed shroud of allegations and obscurity, she faces the trauma of imprisonment and diplomatic bargaining all over again. On the 8th of March Zaghari-Ratcliffe was ordered to face the Iranian court on new charges of propaganda against the regime, linked to her alleged participation in a demonstration outside the Iranian embassy in London and interview with the BBC Persian Service, twelve years previously. Similarly, these charges remain unsubstantiated, exaggerated and formally unrecorded.

The personal trauma of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case has been overshadowed by her transmutation into a political pawn; a symbol of the disunity and long-standing tensions in British-Iranian politics. Her initial imprisonment was made with the promise of release if the British government “made the agreement”. Within this ambiguous reference lies the dispute between Iran and Britain over the £400 million pound tank debt which was left unpaid after the Iranian Revolution of 1979. Iran has cited this as the reason for Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s capture, consequently exposing the true political motivation behind the otherwise arbitrary imprisonment and demonstrating the dehumanisation of Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case at the expense of political strategy and diplomatic precedence. Her first arrest occurred just the day after the UK appointed a British Ambassador to Iran for the first time since 2011, implying that her charges were part of a broader retaliation against British influence. Indeed, since Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s imprisonment in 2015, tensions between the two powers have only escalated. This was exemplified by the capture of British and Iranian tankers in the Strait of Hormuz in 2019, which demonstrated Iran’s capability to disrupt European powers through practical economic intervention as well as the symbolic diplomatic threat which we can see in Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s case. And she is not alone. Iran’s refusal to recognise dual citizenship has enabled the prolonged imprisonment of multiple dual nationals, arrested for similarly ambiguous crimes against the Iranian government. Anoosheh Ashoori, British civil-engineer, was arrested in 2017 and faced a similar trauma to Zaghari-Ratcliffe of self-isolation, interrogation, and lack of legal representation. This culminated in a ten-year prison sentence and fine of $36,000 on the grounds of spying for Israel and illicitly acquiring money.

But do Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, and multiple other cases of dual-national arrest, need to be obscured by a web of diplomatic fallout? Or should this be what is helping their escape?  In 2019, Zaghari-Ratcliffe was granted full diplomatic protection by the British government, escalating the case into a direct political confrontation. However, these powers have yet to be fully utilised. Under international law, Zaghari-Ratcliffe is entitled to consular assistance which she is yet to receive and in her latest court appearance in March, the British Embassy in Tehran declined to accompany her to the hearing. In a statement, her husband said he “hoped timidity is not a choice that we [Britain] come to regret”. Iran has been allowed to slowly degrade Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe into obscurity whilst their diplomatic aggression has engineered the unobtrusive response of the British government and been the dominant feature of international discussion. Whilst Prime Minister Boris Johnson has demanded her “immediate release”, his comments remain couched in the uncomfortable straits of geo-political negotiation of the Iranian nuclear deal- the prime minister underlined the “need for Iran to cease wider destabilising activity and be a positive force in the Gulf region." The dehumanisation of dual-nationals as bargaining tokens and symbols of fractured international relations is exacerbating the crisis itself. We must bring the identity of those imprisoned to the forefront in order to exercise the diplomatic protection which they are afforded. Rather than a “gratuitous waste of human lives” (Richard Zaghari-Ratcliffe), we must transform a politicised, diplomatically elevated dispute into a tangible discussion of human rights and freedom of identity through the recognition of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe as more than a political symbol.

Image courtesy of Iran Talks, ©2015, some rights reserved.